Month: October 2012

To help test the initial hypotheses arising from the SDDb baselines, I am offering a dream research contest, open to anyone willing to give it a try. The first person to send me (at bulkeleyk@gmail.com) the correct answers will win a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

The contest challenges you to look at the word usage frequencies of six sets of dreams (available here) and make the following three predictions for each set: a) Is the dreamer a male or female? b) Is the dreamer younger or older than 18? c) Is this a set of most recent dreams (MRDs) or highly memorable dreams (MemDs)? You will not be able to read any of the dreams–you only get to look at the numerical frequencies of how often they used certain types of words.

I’m going to make it easier by giving three big clues. These clues are so big, in fact, that they will give you a clear map to reach the correct answers.

Clue #1: The six sets of dreams come from four individual dreamers, let’s call them A, B, C, and D. Two individuals gave two sets of dreams each. The other two individuals gave one set of dreams each. This means the contest has a bonus question: Which sets of dreams come from which individual?

Clue #2: As discussed in previous posts, the SDDb baselines have identified a number of significant differences between male and female dreamers and between MRDs and MemDs. These differences can serve as analytic tools of comparison for making the kinds of predictions I’m asking you to propose. Below are several specific tests you can use to identify the dreamer’s gender (male or female) and age (older or younger than 18) and the type of dreams contained in the set (MRDs or MemDs). (Note: The age tests are not drawn directly from the SDDb but from other sources of research on children’s dreams (e.g., David Foulkes, Calvin Hall).)

Clue #3: There are two cases out of the 18 total predictions (3 questions x 6 sets of dreams) in which the overall conclusion of the tests gives the wrong answer. In other words, the tests will lead you to the right answer about 89% of the time. To get 100% of the answers right, you’ll have to add some kind of insight above and beyond the tests.

Good luck! And please “show your work”–explain to me how you derived your predictions.

Tests for Gender:

If Emotion is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Emotion is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Fear is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Fear is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Speech is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Speech is Lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Characters is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Characters is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Family is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Family is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Friendliness is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Friendliness is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Physical Aggression is lower than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If someone presented you with two sets of dreams, one of most recent dreams and one of highly memorable dreams, you could predict with a high degree of confidence which type of dream was in which set, based only on word usage frequencies.

The set with more references to flying, air, family, animals, fantastic beings, Christianity, and death is more likely to consist of highly memorable dreams.

This is a testable hypothesis that emerges out of a comparison of the SDDb baselines for most recent dreams (MRDs) and highly memorable dreams (MemDs), available here. To be clear, it’s a prediction of probability, not certainty. Some highly memorable dreams have none of these elements, while some most recent dreams have several of them. But according to the SDDb baselines, it is the statistical tendency of highly memorable dreams to contain significantly more of these elements than we generally find in most recent dreams.

Whether or not this hypothesis has any practical application, it adds new evidence in support of the theoretical claim that dreams are meaningfully structured not just for the individual dreamer but also in relation to each other. There really are different types of dreams, and their differences can be expressed in increasingly precise terms.

Other researchers such as Harry Hunt and Don Kuiken have proposed psychological models to account for different types of dreams (what Hunt calls “the multiplicity of dreams”). I am not yet at the point with the SDDb baselines to feel comfortable engaging directly with their approaches, but that is definitely a long-term goal.

At this stage I want to look more closely at the higher-frequency MemD elements and try to understand what they might contribute to the dreams’ long-term impact on waking awareness.

Flying: Not all dream references to flying involve magical powers–some relate to the flight of birds, or flying on airplanes, or floating in water, or time “flying” by. But many of the references are indeed about people flying magically, and I think it makes good sense that overall, MemDs have significantly more flying references than MRDs. I would be surprised if it were otherwise, based on the recurrence of magical flying dreams through cross-cultural history. Genuine flying dreams tend to be quite vivid and realistic, and it’s reasonable to assume that such unusually stimulating sensations would make a lasting impact on waking awareness.

Air: Some of the air references occur in flying dreams, but in most MemDs the air references appear in different contexts: the dreamer is struggling to breathe, or facing a tornado, or noticing the wind blowing. I don’t know about dreams of wind, but certainly with dreams of tornados and potential suffocation the memorability of the experience is likely to be very high. A tornado is the most powerfully destructive form of air in nature, and suffocation is a perennial threat to human life, perhaps especially in sleep for people who snore or have apnea.

Family: References to family members appear often in MRDs; they appear even more often in MemDs. I think it’s fair to say that most people’s strongest emotional relationships (both positive and negative) are with family members. Thus it makes sense that their appearance in a dream correlates with high memorability. Looking in more detail at the word search results, references to parents (e.g., mother, father, mom, dad) tend to be the highest, suggesting that dreams in which the individual is cast as a child or in a child’s role are more likely to be memorable.

Animals: Based on any of several different theories (psychoanalytic, developmental, evolutionary), it could be expected that MemDs would have a higher proportion of animals than MRDs. Psychoanalytically, animals symbolize powerful instinctual energies. Developmentally, animals appear more often in children’s than in adults’ dreams, and MemDs are often recalled from early in childhood. In evolutionary terms, animals in dreams may reflect ancestral threats that we are innately primed to notice and remember.

Fantastic Beings: This category by definition includes characters who are not “real,” so their appearance in dreams naturally arouses some degree of heightened awareness and emotional impact. Many of them are perceived as extremely frightening and dangerous to the life of the dreamer. I was surprised by the SDDb baseline results that the MemDs do not have more fear-related emotions than the MRDs, but perhaps what makes some MemDs different is the supernatural source of the fear. There is a connection to be made here with the notion of “minimally counterintuitive supernatural agents” as used in the cognitive science of religion–dreaming is a rich experiential source of people’s religious and spiritual beliefs about such beings.

Christianity: Many references to Christianity in both MRDs and MemDs are relatively trivial references to Christmas, or mild oaths, or a person’s name. But more often in the MemDs there are direct references to interactions with Jesus, battles with demons, visiting heaven, and worshipping in church. In a majority-Christian country like the U.S., where all the SDDb baseline participants reside, this seems like an expectable result. Insofar as Christianity, like most religions, is concerned with deep questions of morality, suffering, and faith, any dream that refers to religious teachings is likely to register more memorably in the dreamer’s awareness.

Death: Whether considered in religious or secular terms, death surely counts as a major existential concern of human life. Dreaming itself has long been mythologically associated with death, and cultural traditions all over the world have stories about dreams as a portal to the afterlife. In MemDs the theme of death takes many forms: other characters dying or being killed right in front of the dreamer, dead relatives appearing as if alive (i.e., visitation dreams), and, more rarely, the dreamer him or herself dying. When the prospect of mortality arises in a dream, it’s not surprising that the individual takes notice and remembers.

What do these seven higher-frequency MemD elements have in common?

For one thing, several of them involve “counter-factuals,” i.e., phenomena that are literally impossible in ordinary waking life. Magically flying in the air, encountering fantastic beings, seeing people who are dead appear as if alive–these are strikingly anomalous experiences that stand out from ordinary life and make a big impression on memory.

Secondly, several of the MemD themes involve dire threats to the individual’s life and well-being. Dreams of death, demons, monsters, wild animals, suffocation, and tornados naturally arouse a host of psychological and physiological responses that can literally seize the dreamer’s attention and hold it long after waking.

Thirdly, a few MemD themes relate closely to the prominent themes of children’s dreams generally, with more animals and higher family references. As I noted earlier, the SDDb baseline for MemDs includes numerous childhood-era dreams reported by children and adults, so it is definitely skewed toward children’s dream content. That means the differences between MRDs and MemDs could be explained as artifacts of the differences between adults and children. I grant there will be a large degree of overlap between highly memorable dreams and children’s dreams–precisely because the most memorable dreams people often recall are dreams from childhood.

Not all children’s dreams are big dreams–but many big dreams are dreams that have been remembered from childhood.

Overall, MRDs are more anchored in present waking circumstances, while MemDs seem to have less connection to current social reality. MRDs reflect more of daily life, while MemDs express deeper existential themes.

These results derive from 828 female MRDs and 691 male MRDs, compared to 801 female MemDs and 504 male MemDs. You can see the spreadsheet here.

With the help of Dominic Luscinci at Far West Research, I analyzed these four sets of dreams in terms of their similarities and differences, adjusting the levels of statistical significance to account for multiple tests in each word class to protect against type 1 errors. Fisher’s Exact Test was used in cases where the criteria for chi-square testing were not present.

Before getting into the MRD vs. MemD comparison, I wanted to know what gender differences were most significant. I found that female MRDs and MemDs are more likely than male reports of both types to include references to emotions (especially fear), characters (especially family), speech, and friendly social interactions. Female MRDs have more perception and cognition, while male MRDs have more physical aggression and sexuality.

There are fewer gender differences in the MemDs than the MRDs.

Then I looked at the MRDs and the MemDs to see what differences show up for both males and females. I found that MRDs for both genders have more references to emotion, cognition, social interactions, and culture. MemDs have more references to nature (especially air and flying), characters (family, animals, fantastic beings), Christianity, and death. The female MemDs have more fire, falling, and physical aggression words. The male MemDs have more chromatic and achromatic colors.

There are many more differences between MRDs and MemDs than between the males and females. The comparison with the fewest differences was female MemDs vs. male MemDs; these two sets of dreams were the most like each other.

My first reaction to these findings was surprise that the MRDs had more words relating to perception and emotion, since I expected these indices of intensity and vividness would be more frequent in highly memorable dreams.

But I also felt good because these results basically replicate a 2011 study I did with Ernest Hartmann on big dreams. In the conclusion of that article we wrote “people’s big dreams are distinguished by a tendency toward ‘primal’ qualities of form and content: more intense imagery, more imagery picturing nightmarish emotions, more nature references, more physical aggression, more family characters, more fantastic/imaginary beings, and more magical happenings, along with less high-order cognition and less connection to ordinary daily surroundings.” (p. 165)

These findings are very similar to the SDDb baseline results. They give me confidence that these differences between MRDs and MemDs are real and not the result of random variations in the data.

The comparison with the 2011 study is not perfect, since a) that project did not adjust the dream reports for word length, including reports of less than 50 and more than 300 words, unlike the SDDb baselines, b) some aspects of the conclusion (e.g., intense imagery, nightmarish emotions) were derived from Hartmann’s Central Image scoring system and did not emerge from the word search analysis, and c) the participant pool had a big gender imbalance (147 female, 15 male). However, the mostly female composition of the 2011 study actually points to an even closer alignment with the SDDb female results because the female MemDs (but not the male MemDs) have higher frequencies of fire, falling, and physical aggression, all of which seem consistent with the 2011 study’s conclusion.

In a future post I will look at the SDDb’s high-frequency MemD elements–flying, air, family, animals, fantastic beings, Christianity, death–to try and discern what each of them adds to the dream’s memorability and impact on the dreamer.

“Dreams are not mysterious, supernatural, or esoteric phenomena. They are not messages from the gods nor are they prophecies of the future.” That’s what Calvin Hall said in his 1966 book The Meaning of Dreams (New York: McGraw-Hill, revised edition, p. 120). Hall’s secular beliefs may or may not be justified, but what’s certain is that his baseline of “norm dreams” was designed to explain normal, average, ordinary types of dreams. He was not interested in unusual, extraordinary types of dreams involving “esoteric phenomena.” As a result, the baseline he developed gives what I call a homogenized view of dreams, privileging the theoretical significance of common, recently remembered dreams and denying the scientific relevance of rare but extremely memorable types of dreams from earlier times of life.

This is why I’ve created not one SDDb baseline, but two–one for most recent dreams (MRDs), and one for highly memorable dreams (MemDs). You can find a spreadsheet with the baseline word usage frequencies here. As always, I offer the caveat that this is a work in progress and will surely grow and change in the future. My focus for now is to clarify some of the basic features of different types of dreams. I’d like to know how MRDs and MemDs are similar, because that could tell us something interesting about how the sleeping mind operates consistently across varying dream types. I’d also like to know how MRDs and MemDs are different, because that could tell us something interesting about the complexity of the mind in sleep and the creative potentials of the nocturnal imagination. Setting up two baselines will, I hope, help the cause of answering these questions and provide a more sophisticated resource for the comparative analysis of other collections of dreams.

MRD Baseline: This includes 828 female dream reports and 691 male dream reports, all from the USA, all between 50 and 300 words in length, drawn from three sources. The Hall and Van de Castle norm dreams (491 male, 490 female) form one component of the baseline. This enables future analyses to maintain a solid “backwards compatibility” with the traditional standard of measurement in the dream research field, even as we continue trying to expand and improve beyond it. The additional dreams come from two SDDb sources: The Demographic Survey 2010, which included a “most recent dream” question, and the SCU Sleep/Wake Study 2008, which asked each participant to keep a dream journal and provide their two most recent dreams. The SCU participants were college students like the HVDC norm dreams participants. Those in the Demographic Survey were considerably older; I don’t yet have a detailed analysis of the age data, but I’m pretty sure the majority of participants were 50+ years of age.

MemD Baseline: This includes 801 female reports and 504 male reports, all from the USA, all between 50 and 300 words in length, drawn from four SDDb sources. One is a question asking participants in the Demographic Survey 2010 to describe the earliest dream from childhood they can still remember. Second is a question asking those same participants to describe the worst nightmare they can recall from any time in their life. Third is a survey of children ages 8-18 asking them to describe the most memorable dream they’ve ever had. Fourth is a survey of adults asking them to describe the most memorable dream they’ve ever had. Unlike the MRD baseline, this one includes reports from children and reports answering different types of questions. I have grouped these sources into a single baseline because they all fit comfortably under the heading “highly memorable dreams.” Two of the sources use exactly that phrase in their questions, and the other two asked questions implicitly seeking reports of dreams with unusual memorability. The inclusion of children’s reports is justified, I believe, because so many highly memorable dreams come from childhood, and thus children themselves may be in an especially good position to recall these dreams and describe them in detail.

At the far right of the spreadsheet you can see the word usage frequencies for each of these constituent sources of the two baselines. As I said in the previous post, two important principles for creating a useful baseline are transparency and flexibility. The baselines I’ve created have their limits, but they offer a great deal of transparency–you can see exactly where the reports are coming from–and flexibility–you can change or revise the baselines to suit your own purposes.

In the next post of this series, I’ll talk about some of the initial patterns I see in comparing the MRD and MemD baselines. I invite your thoughts and observations! And corrections where I’ve gotten something wrong…